


Abandon All Hope

by AsexualMagneto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsexualMagneto/pseuds/AsexualMagneto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retrospective on Dean's years in Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abandon All Hope

Dean screams for a week and a half, calling for Sam or Anybody to save him, until eventually it sinks in that nobody could hear him but the demons laughing as they sliced into him. From then on, Dean primarily screams in pain.

For a year, perhaps more, Dean tugs at the chains looped around and through his flesh, as if slicing them further into his soul would break them somehow. Eventually it sinks in that the chains were never going to break, no matter how many times he shattered upon them.

Dean likes, when his mind was not blank with pain, to imagine what Sam might be doing. After a year, he imagines Sam dragging himself out of his drunken grieving for his lost brother and moving on. Hunting a bit, maybe meeting some girl somewhere that the idiot would fall head over heels for.

After five years, he’s sure that Sam has met someone worth protecting, and managed to distance himself from the life and settle down. After ten years, he’s certain Sam, now in his late thirties, is married to some nice blonde chick and starting a family. He spits in Alistair’s face.

After twenty years of choking back his own blood, Dean is sure that by now Sam’s got two snot-nosed little kids that he drives to school in their granddad’s - then uncle’s - then dad’s ancient Impala. Sam would take great care of it, make sure it was still running, even if it’s half a century old now and can’t quite match the speed of the fancy new futuristic cars Dean doesn’t give a rat’s ass he’s missing out on. He knows Sam would drive it with his wife and kids up to see their great-uncle Bobby every other weekend, and the old man would find some new bit falling off the girl and re-fasten it. He laughs humorlessly when Alistair comes around.

After thirty years, it sinks in that Dean’s been lying to himself. There’s no way Sam was able to escape the life. Hell, he probably hasn’t even managed to survive this long without his big brother to look after him. Bobby had probably died long ago, and his car was most likely rusting in the lot of Singer Auto, and everyone else they’d ever known had probably gone down fighting. It eventually sinks in that there’s nobody left to miss Dean. There’s nobody left to scour books for loopholes out of Hell or beg and bargain for Dean’s soul. Nobody is ever going to come save him. All he’s got left is the demons laughing over him and his soul on a cutting board of chains.

Who is he kidding? He was only holding onto his humanity by a thread because he felt he owed it to someone. But it’s not like he’s ever going to see any of them again. He’s accepted that this is the only home he will ever know. And if he’s going to rot in here forever, he might as well get the good side of the bargain.

Dean picks up the knife, and he does not think about Sam anymore, he does not mentally tally the years as they pass. He stops caring how much blood is collecting on his dirty soul. Eternity has only just begun.

After forty years, his Anybody appears to save him, a creature so encased in brilliant white light that Dean’s filthy soul can’t even look at it. It destroys every hellish thing it comes in contact with, and for a moment Dean tries to flee before it is holding him tighter than any chain ever had and pulling him _out._

Dean digs himself out of his grave and he tastes Earth for the first time in forty years and he is not looking forward to finding out what’s happened to his little brother. Doesn’t want to think about how he must have died bloody. Doesn’t want to face a world that’s moved on without him.

When the newspapers and magazines all read September 2008, only four months after he’d died, Dean can’t believe it. There must be some sort of prank going on here because it’s been decades and he remembers every single one of them.

Then Bobby picks up the phone on the old number that Dean still remembers, and he forces himself to believe it.

Just as he now forces himself to be the man he was forty years ago, to pretend his insides aren’t coated with the blood of who knows how many souls, and to go find Sam because for the first time in years he’s allowing himself to believe his brother is still alive.

Another part of him wants to find whatever sonofabitch dragged him out of Hell and beg to be thrown back.


End file.
